New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark says she is still waiting to receive a formal apology from Israel over a scandal involving Israeli spies.

Clark said on Monday that she was encouraged by the words of regret from Israel’s president but that New Zealand still wanted a formal apology. Read more »

Nearly two years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women are no better off than under the rule of Saddam Hussein, human rights group Amnesty International has said.
In a new report on Tuesday, the London-based organisation said that while systematic repression under Hussein had ended, it has been replaced by increased murders and sexual abuse - including by US forces.
Washington promised that the overthrow of the former president would free the Iraqi people from years of oppression and set them on the road to democracy.
But Amnesty said post-war insecurity had left women at risk of violence and curtailed their freedoms.
Iraqi women and girls now live in constant fear of violence, said the report. –more–

Author and friend of George W. Bush, Doug Wead just released audio tapes of private conversations with Mr. Bush in which Mr. Bush discusses his drug usage and wild behavior when he was younger. These conversations took place in 1998 and 2000 and Mr. Bush did not know that he was being recorded. Regarding his cocaine usage Bush said, “i haven’t denied anything”. Mr. Bush’s unclear thinking was present when he basically admits to smoking marijuana but says that adults shouldn’t admit to using drugs. Read more »

Archaeologists who have been digging in the Roman Forum have found evidence of a grand house or palace from the 8th century BC. The palace is extremely large for that period and showed signs of architectural extravagance for that period as well. The area being explored is on the beginning slope of the Palantine near the Sanctuary of Venus. Local archaeology professor Andrea Carandini has been searching the area for over 20 years for such a find. Discovering this palace has great significance to historians. Read more »

Israel has been privately pressing Washington to solve the Iran nuclear problem in a hint that Tel Aviv may be left with no choice but to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, defense officials say.
Military analysts say the United States “would have no problem” taking out Iran’s major nuclear facilities should it decide to launch a pre-emptive strike.
The defense officials say Israel isn’t putting its concerns about Iran in the form of a “you attack or we do” ultimatum to the United States. But they said senior Israeli officials often have raised the Iran problem during visits to Washington in the past 18 months. Continued>>>

Nationalist demo overshadows Dresden memorial The 60th anniversary of the Second World War Allied bombing of Dresden has been overshadowed by one of the largest public, post war gatherings of neo-Nazis.
Organisers of the event had wanted the lasting image of the anniversary to be one of peace and reconciliation.
But the milestone was upstaged by a march of around 5,000 Nationalists through the streets of the eastern German city. Read more »

Israel continues to swindle money from the US taxpayers and violate international law. The Israeli Knesset voted to compensate Israeli settlers who choose to leave the Gaza Strip in the amount of $870 million. Payments per family would range from $200,000 to $500,000. These settlers can be viewed as terrorists who violate international law and illegally occupy Palestinian land. Read more »

The killing and violence in Iraq continues at a rapid pace these past two days. This latest violence has killed four policemen, eight workers (one foreign), six US soldiers, and one fighter, as well as leaving one leading Iraqi official missing.

Violence against Iraqi police has been running rampant in the area of Samarra. On Wednesday, an assassination attempt on a police captain left three officers and one fighter dead. The next day, a bomb killed one officer and left three others wounded. Read more »

Big Brother is attempting to infiltrate our public schools by electronically monitoring the students. This new technology, called Electronic School Badges, allows the students to be tracked and monitored while at school. The students are tracked through a radio frequency antenna. The California schools say that it is for the safety of the students and to help with attendance problems, but parents are angry and argue that it violates the student’s right to privacy. Historically, students have virtually no rights once they enter the schools, but if schools are allowed to electronically monitor students in such a way, how long will it be before the government decides everyone needs to wear an electronic badge so their actions can be monitored? more>>>

The Palestinian Authority is accusing Israel of breaking February’s ceasefire agreement after three Palestinians were killed on Tuesday, including a teenage boy. Another 15 year old Palestinian boy was also shot and killed on Monday.

An Israeli army spokesman said troops near Nablus shot and killed two armed Palestinians who were seen near a Jewish settlement. A heavily armed Jewish settler in the town of Baitunia shot 15-year-old Ala Dar Khalil in his back, killing him on Tuesday night. The Jewish settler was seen fleeing the scene in his car. Read more »

(If this is not a sign to you of what a sick jewish society we are living in, check your pulse) Russian-speaking women trapped into sexual servitude in the US will soon be able to reach out for help through a toll-free international hotline.

Two groups devoted to rescuing and repatriating victims of human trafficking from Russia announced on Monday that a help line will open in the US next month.

“I think the trafficking situation here is enormous,” said Juliette Engel, founding director of the MiraMed Institute, which provides social programmes for orphaned children and trafficking victims in Russia.

Engel estimated that thousands of Russian and former Soviet bloc women were trafficked into the US each year, although she did not have precise numbers. Read more »

Tikrit, Iraq — In the midafternoon of Oct. 9, 2003, Kirk von Ackermann, an American contract worker from the Bay Area, used a satellite phone to call a colleague from a lonely desert road between Tikrit and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. He told his colleague he had a flat tire and needed a jack.

About 45 minutes later, the colleague found von Ackermann’s car, abandoned. There was no sign of von Ackermann, who had been alone when he called. No hint of struggle, not even a footprint. All that remained was his satellite phone, his laptop computer, and, on the car’s backseat a briefcase holding $40,000 in $100 bills. Continued>>>

A coalition of Shia religious parties has won the Iraq election, taking almost half the votes and raising the spectre of Islamic law finding its way into the country’s new constitution.

The United Iraqi Alliance, also known as the Shia House, took 48 per cent of the vote, winning 130 seats in the new 275-member national assembly, according to provisional results of the 30 January poll.

The alliance of Kurdish parties came second on 26 per cent, with the party of the US-appointed interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, finishing a distant third, with less than 14 per cent. Continued>>>

The Confession of a “Terrorist”The evening of February 8, 2002 was marked by a unusually nauseous dampness. Something between rain and snow dripped from the gray sky, turning upon contact with the ground into a dirty sucking ooze. Sharp gusts of wet February wind penetrated to the bones of those rare passers-by unfortunate enough to be caught in the gloom of the dark streets of Kharkov. All in all, it was memorable weather…

And only in one courtyard of one multi-storeyed building on Moscow Prospekt could an unusual liveliness be observed, which upon closer examination turned out to be an agitated commotion. A crowd of frightened men and women holding crying children shivered in the wind, illuminated by the headlamps of numerous ambulances, fire-trucks and police cars. Read more »

(Just another example of how the government that the USA set up in Germany after WWII is completely perverted, with twisted jewish values) A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her “profile” and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990. Read more »

An Israeli soldier has been wounded as Palestinian resistance fighters launched several attacks in response to the killing of a schoolgirl some 24 hours earlier.

An Israeli military base near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank was targeted on Tuesday, and Aljazeera has learned that one soldier was injured in the attack.

Hamas’ military wing, Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for two of the three attacks in which five mortar shells were also fired at the illegal Neve Dekalim settlement in occupied Gaza Strip.

The National Resistance Brigades, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), has also claimed responsibility for firing two rockets at the Neve Dekalim colony in response to the killing of Nuran. Continued>>>